Animate a grade

Most grade settings can change over time. Actions take the place of keyframes, so this is how you keyframe a grade. Put a change inside an action and a shot can warm up as the sun comes out, drain to black and white, or ease into a new contrast curve.

Menu: Clip ▸ Add Action
Keys: ⌥⌘K
Where: Clip tab ▸ action laneClip tab ▸ Color
Agent tools: add_actionset_action_endset_video

Grade inside an action

Select the clip and add an action, or select one on its action lane.
Open the Clip tab’s Color sub-tab.
Change a control. The change goes to the action’s end state, and the value ramps there from where it stands when the action starts.
Move the playhead through the action, or play it, to watch the grade travel.

Light, Color, Wheels, Curves and the look’s Amount can all animate, and on an adjustment clip so can Strength and the Qualifier.

While the action is selected, every control shows the value at the action’s end. When you’re done, press Esc to go back to editing the clip itself. See Set what an action animates to for how an action’s end state works in every tab.

What ramps smoothly

These move gradually from the start value to the end value, along the action’s easing curve:

every slider in Light and Color
each wheel’s colour push and master in Wheels
the look’s Amount
Strength on an adjustment clip
the Qualifier’s numbers: Centre, Width, Soft, Low, High and Blur

Curves animate

Curves in an action always animate, on all six channels, including Hue and Sat. An edit to a curve goes to the action’s end even when you add or delete a point.

The two curves	How they animate
Same number of points	They ramp point by point
One is a straight line	The straight one lines up with the other curve’s points, then they ramp point by point
Different numbers of points	Their values blend over the action, from the first curve’s result to the second’s

Animate a curve back to neutral

To have a curve straighten out over the action, write a straight curve to its end:

For one channel, right-click its cell in the picker and choose Reset Red, or whichever channel it is. The item is greyed out while that channel is already straight.
For every channel, right-click the plot and choose Set end value to default.

The section’s Reset isn’t there while an action is selected. See Master and RGB curves.

A look switches instead

Turning a look on or off, or changing it, applies to the clip itself and not to the action, even with an action selected. A look tile, None and Clip ▸ Look all change the clip’s own look, as one undo step called Look, and the change shows across the whole clip.

Amount is what animates. To fade a look in, choose the look and set Amount to 0 % with no action selected, then select an action and raise Amount. The Amount row only shows once the clip has a look, so choose the look first.

Animate a qualifier

A qualifier’s numbers ramp, but a range itself can’t fade in or out.

A qualifier range switches

Ticking Hue, Saturation or Luma with an action selected turns that range on at the action’s end. It has nothing to ramp from, so it stays off through the action and then appears whole, at the end values you set. Invert switches at the end too.

If the clip has no qualifier at all when the action starts, the whole qualifier appears at the action’s end, and its Blur doesn’t ramp either.

Unticking a range the clip has on turns it off at the action’s end, and so does Set end value to default on its row. With the action selected the box reads unticked wherever the playhead is, and the picture keeps the range until the end. Ticking the box again turns the range back on at the clip’s numbers. Remove from action N or Clear takes the whole qualifier back out of the action.

A hue centre takes the short way

An animated Centre goes the short way round the colour wheel, so 350° to 10° passes through 0° and never visits the greens and blues. Two centres exactly 180° apart have no short way, so the number moves straight from one to the other.

See what the action animates

Row marks and the tab badge show what the selected action does to the grade.

◆ in a row’s gutter means the selected action animates that row. See Read the row marks for all the marks.
◆N on the Color sub-tab counts how many grade settings the action animates.

The badge counts settings, not values. Each of these counts as one, however many values inside it change:

Light and Color, together, for all thirteen sliders
Wheels
Curves
Look
Qualifier
Strength, on an adjustment clip

The same grouping decides the marks. All thirteen Light and Color sliders show ◆ as soon as the action changes one of them, and every Qualifier row does as soon as the action changes any part of the qualifier. The Qualifier’s range rows and Invert read “at end” whenever that happens, even for a range whose numbers are ramping.

Take a setting back out

To	Do this
Take a row out of the action	Hover over its ◆ and click the ×, or right-click the row and choose Remove from action N
Take a section out of the action	Choose Clear in the section’s header
Make the row animate to its default	Right-click the row and choose Set end value to default
Put a row back to its default on the clip itself, with no action selected	Right-click the row and choose Reset to default

Clear takes the place of Reset in a grade section’s header while an action is selected, and shows only when the action animates one of that section’s rows.

The default items are greyed out while the row already holds its default. A text field keeps its own right-click menu, so right-click a row’s label, its slider, its pop-up or its gutter. On Wheels and Curves the whole section is one row, so these items act on all of it.

How each control shows an action

Control	While the action animates it
Slider	The same marks as everywhere else in the inspector. See See the value change as it plays
Wheel disc	A hollow square at the action’s start value, the puck in the action colour, and a coral mark at the value under the playhead
Wheel strip	The strip fills in the action colour from the start value, the knob is in the action colour, and a coral tick marks the playhead’s value
Curve plot	The action’s start curve is dashed, and the edited curve and its points are in the action colour
Qualifier strip	The band is outlined and its knobs are drawn in the action colour

The coral marks show only when the playhead is on the clip and the value there differs from the end value. A qualifier’s hue band that wraps past 0° gets its knobs in the action colour but no outline. The three wheels are one row, so all three discs and strips count as animated as soon as the action changes any one of them.

With an agent

An agent uses add_action, then set_action_end with the end values in its video group: color, wheels, curves, look.amount, and on an adjustment clip qualifier and opacity, which is Strength. It changes the clip’s own look with set_video. It can do one thing the Color tab can’t: name a different look in an action’s end. A look or LUT that differs between the start and the end switches at the action’s end, Amount included. Amount ramps only while the look stays the same. See Tools: animation.